This is Richard Wolff from Democracy At Work responding to another Ask Prof
Wolff question from our Patreon community. This question comes from Nicholas Cuevas,
and I want to answer his question which basically asks me to explain the meanings of terms
like historical materialism, dialectical materialism, dialectics and so on. These
terms have a long history in philosophy generally and particularly in marxian or marxist-inspired
philosophical debates. They aren't quite so frequent these days, but like everything else
in the way of socialism and marxism and so on, it's experiencing a renaissance, a re-interest,
a rebirth, a renewal; and I think basically that that is a good thing since there are
enormous insights to be recovered from and made use of/developed out of that tradition.
Okay well let's begin with dialectical materialism and to get at that we begin with the materialism
part. In this view the history of human thought of philosophy—of thinking about what life
is [and] what the world is—there are two broad strains of thought, one the reverse of the other.
The way this approach goes there are two realms, two kinds of reality in the world.
One is the hard material reality—the things you can touch and see and hear and smell:
the earth, the air, the food we eat, the people we encounter—these are the material reality. And
then there's another kind of reality—what's in our minds: ideas, concepts, thoughts, spiritual
meanings, things like that—and the debate this perspective says has always been
“which determines the other?” In other words, do the thoughts we have come out of the material
reality we are born into, live through, and die from? So that the material shapes
the ideal—that's the name for the other realm of our reality—that's called materialism.
If you believe that somehow the hard reality is first and foremost and determines the realm
of ideas. The reverse is idealism and it holds that no in the beginning, notice the language,
in the beginning there was the word. The way the bible opens, in the beginning,
is something spiritual, something ideal, maybe a deity, a non-material god-like something.
This idea then says that idealism comes first. The idea precedes the reality, shapes, [and] causes
the reality, not the other way around. And this either or has been understood by many as the great
philosophical debate that has dogged the human race [and] inspired the human race for centuries.
Okay so materialism, that tradition,
goes back at least as far as the ancient Greeks and no doubt further that is understood
by most marxists in most of the tradition as well as non-marxist and many other traditions.
Materialism is the notion that the hard reality of our physical selves, the physical world around us,
our interactions to survive and grow in that environment—that material reality is primary
and is what shapes whatever ideas, concepts, thoughts, and spirits we think are there.
What is dialectics then? Well dialectics began in its modern formulation
with ideas that are old but that were brought together in the most
powerful way imaginable by the german philosopher Hegel—a teacher of marxist.
And Hegel's notion was, yeah, idealism comes first (he was a good christian in that way) but
he saw a very complicated relationship between the ideal and the material, and it wasn't
simply [that] one determined the other but a kind of back and forth between them. Marx developed
this idea much further. [Insisting] that he was a materialist, Marx and most marxists have agreed,
but that he wasn't about to say that the material determines the ideal—end of story. No no no.
That Marx criticized as mechanical materialism; He distinguished his own view
as dialectical materialism and here's roughly what he meant. The material is in some way primary.
It shapes our ideas, our spiritual notions, our religions, our cultural institutions, and so on.
The material shapes the ideal, but here comes the big idea, it goes in reverse
too. The relationship between dial—excuse me—between materialism and idealism is dialectical
(and by the way the word dialectical comes from dialogue). When you have a dialogue two different
people are talking to each other. Each one is speaking and listening, articulating and learning.
This notion of the back and forth interplay is what Marx wanted to add to materialism. A respect
for the idea in the world shaped by the material but having a reverse impact. So yes the material
world shapes the ideal aspects of the world, but so does it in reverse—most marxists finishing this
idea by saying it's an interaction. Materialism is a dialectical relationship with ideas,
but it's back and forth. The material is the more important shaper than the ideal, so the material
is more shaper than shaped and the idea is more shaped than shaper but they're interactive.
Historical materialism simply is taking these ideas and applying them to history. So history is
moved by the hard material reality—making enough food to live, carrying out enough production to
transform nature so we can live from nature, etc. etc. Material reality but it shapes religions,
ideas, concepts, [and] spiritualities which in turn impact on our history. So it's a dialectical
materialist approach to explaining history, and that's called historical materialism because if
it's taken from this marxist notion of dialectics it incorporates the dialectics in itself.
These are the basic ideas and they have a lot to teach us because they are ways of interrogating
not only the historical past but the present. How do the hard economic realities of today shape the
way people think and how do the ways people think react back on to shape the reality we're
living through? That would be a dialectical or historical materialist way to examine the present.
This is Richard Wolff thanking our Patreon community for their wonderful questions.